BootstrapLabs is pleased to announce the return of the Applied Artificial Intelligence Conference in San Francisco on May 11, 2017.

After the incredible success of last year’s Applied AI Conference, we have expanded into a new venue and this year’s conference will be 2x bigger. There are only a few tickets left – don’t miss out – register now at this link.

Discover the latest innovation in Artificial Intelligence, and see why everyone is talking about AI today:

This year’s conference is focused on practical applications and the current commercialization of AI technologies across industries such as Transportation & Logistics, Internet of Things (IoT), Future of Work (FoW), Financial Technologies (FinTech), Cybersecurity, and Healthcare Technologies (HealthTech).

The 2017 conference agenda will provide insights into the present and future impact of AI on your organization, as well as in your daily life. It will also feature concrete ways, tools, and methods to prepare, organize, and tap AI’s transformative power. As active early stage investors in Applied AI, BootstrapLabs will provide an overview of the investment and consolidation landscape at the conference.

Event Summary:

We stand in front of the 4th and largest wave of the industrial revolution, powered by AI and Data. This is the biggest opportunity, so far, for innovation and entrepreneurship, and every single industry will be disrupted and redefined by companies that are not yet even born.

With the AI market projected to grow over 20 fold in the next 10 years, to $3Tn annually, we believe Applied Artificial Intelligence represents one of the major wealth creation opportunities of this century.

Manufacturing robots, unmanned vehicles for transportation, warehouses drones as well as space exploration and environmental monitoring empowered by new architectures for distributed computing and intelligent systems are the initial signals of the next generation of industrial systems.

The power of AI will ultimately empower humans to work closely with robots, and bring us to the new age of collaborative systems that can operate side by side with humans.

Special Opportunity

Thank You To Our Host and Partner

https://bootstraplabs.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2017/04/AI_Industrial_revolution_Post9.jpg14401440luigicongedohttp://bootstraplabs.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2018/08/Bootstrap-website_white_logo.pngluigicongedo2017-04-07 10:31:592017-04-07 10:32:57Announcing the Applied Artificial Intelligence in the New Industrial Revolution

New York, NY, April 2, 2017 – In April, BootstrapLabs founders Nicolai Wadstrom and Ben Levy were invited to the United Nations Headquarters, overlooking New York’s East River, for a private and exclusive roundtable dinner with 70 of the best minds in artificial intelligence.

Ben reported on Facebook:
“The world is preparing for what is to come! We are talking 10x the economical impact of the industrial revolution (approx. $14 Trillion vs. $1 Trillion) in 1/5 of the time!!! Humbled to have our firm BootstrapLabs be recognized among the top leaders in the space for its work supporting innovation and entrepreneurship in #AI and sharing its knowledge openly around the world.

Very excited to be sharing these incredible moments with my partner Nicolai Wadstrom, and my brother Patrick L Rosenthal who, with his company Emoshape – Emotion Synthesis, is making significant contribution to the future of AI. BootstrapLabs is pleased to extend a big THANK YOU to Mark D Minevich and Comtrade, without whom this gathering would not have been possible.”

The event brought together AI chiefs from Facebook, Google, IBM, Airbnb, and Samsung, among other leaders in the space. For more information, check out this write-up in Newsweek.

https://bootstraplabs.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2017/11/AI-FOR-GOOD-Banner.jpg11602560edwardfarrayehttp://bootstraplabs.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2018/08/Bootstrap-website_white_logo.pngedwardfarraye2017-04-02 11:00:262017-11-07 12:29:15BootstrapLabs Founders at the UN with the Top World Luminaries in AI

Redwood City, CA, March 25, 2017 – Our co-founder Ben Levy was a featured speaker during the MIT Club of Northern California Tech Conference 2017 held on March 25th in Redwood City.

Ben spoke about AI investment strategy on the “AI Idol” panel alongside other participants from Sequoia Capital, 500 Startups, and Mentors Fund. The panel discussion was one of many interesting topics covered during a full day of AI exploration and knowledge sharing.

and Hands + Machines) focused on how to build real-world AI solutions and discussed the impact of AI in our society and our lives. The US Government CTO Megan Smith spoke at the conference, among many other leading AI technologists, professors, and investors.

Ben’s presentation was focused on the current investment landscape for AI applications across key global business sectors, including the effects of AI on legal practice in business. The event also featured speakers Howie Choset, CTO for the ARM Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, and Michael Wagner, CEO and co-founder of Edge Case Research.

The K&L Gates AI Initiative assists business clients in capitalizing on the most recent advancements in AI technology and best practices surrounding its investment and application. The launch of the AI initiative follows the firm’s announcement earlier this month of a $10 million gift to Carnegie Mellon University for the establishment of the “K&L Gates Endowment for Ethics and Computational Technologies,” to study the ethical issues posed by artificial intelligence. Partners from the firm later spoke at BootstrapLabs’ Applied Artificial Intelligence Conference 2017 in May.

San Francisco, March 5, 2017 – Our co-founder Ben Levy spoke on the AI Venture Capital Panel at the AI By The Bay Conference on March 5th in San Francisco.

Ben shared BootstrapLabs’ vision about where and why to invest in early stage AI startups, as well as insights on AI talent wars and other challenges of being a founder today. You can watch the panel here. Ben spoke alongside:

The AI By The Bay Conference is an immersive three-day conference of AI learning and networking, ranging from drilled down technical knowledge sharing to overarching strategy, and focuses on both startup and enterprise contexts.

https://bootstraplabs.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2017/03/AI-By-The-Bay-Conference-.jpg7651024luigicongedohttp://bootstraplabs.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2018/08/Bootstrap-website_white_logo.pngluigicongedo2017-03-05 11:42:092017-10-25 11:44:25BootstrapLabs at the AI By The Bay Conference

How to Learn Machine Learning – an Investor’s Perspective

Episode Summary: There’s been lot of hype around AI and ML in business over the past five years. Even among investors exist a lot of misconceptions about using ML in a business context, and how to get up to speed on and learn machine learning as it applies to utility in industry. Recently, I talked with Benjamin Levy of BootstrapLabs in San Francisco, whom I met through an investment banking friend in Boston.

BootstrapLabs invests in Bay area companies, and Levy also travels around the world speaking about investing in AI companies and raising funds for new ventures. In this episode, Levy gives his perspective on what investors and executives get wrong about ML and and AI, and discusses how they can get up to speed and leverage the applications for these technologies and related expertise to really make a difference (i.e. increased ROI) in their businesses.

Brief Recognition: Ben Levy is the co­-founder of BootstrapLabs, a leading venture capital firm, based in Silicon Valley and focused on Applied Artificial Intelligence.

Born in France and living in Silicon Valley for the past 18 years, Ben is a repeat entrepreneur who launched, built, and exited two startups in the financial technology space. Praedea Solutions, a data mining software company using machine learning and image recognition technology, was acquired by Mergent in 2005, and InsideVenture, a financial social network for the founders of venture-­backed pre-­IPO startups and long­-only institutional investors on Wall Street, was acquired by SecondMarket in 2009 (and is now part of NASDAQ).

Earlier in his career, Ben was a Technology, Media, and Telecom Investment Banker who advised startup founders and CxOs of Fortune 500 companies on corporate strategy, financing, and M&A. Ben is also a frequent keynote and panel speaker on innovation, technology investing, entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence, and globalization in the US, Europe, and Asia.

Current Affiliations: Co-founder of BootstrapLabs

Interview Highlights:

The following is a condensed version of the full audio interview, which is available in the above links on TechEmergence’s SoundCloud and iTunes stations.

(1:54) What do you see as some of the bigger misconceptions around machine learning in industry by business people and investors?

Benjamin Levy: We’ve had the benefit of traveling around the world…we talk to executives, family offices, people that are running businesses, and I think there’s been a lot of hype around AI…it’s nothing new, it’s been around about 50 years, there’s been an incredible breakthrough lately, but that’s coming as a result of the explosion of big data, of computing power at scale…

…I think it actually starts with basic lack of understanding of how the technology is going to impact their business…if you’re a business person, at the end of the day, you’re going to be caring about your ROI—is my product better, faster, cheaper; am I selling it to my customers and are my customers happier, and am I competitive. In 2 to 3 years, people will not be selling you AI software, they’ll be selling you upgrades, and that upgrade will have a lot of machine intelligence and a lot of AI, and you’re not going to talk about it because the way you sell AI technology is not going to change…now, the ability that you have as an executive, to have the right talent in-house to evolve your products so that they become smarter…that is the hard part….

(7:20) Talk about the notion (that you mentioned) of “lumpier” in the markets —what do you mean in that regard?

BL: If you look at the global perspective…just from a pure business stand point, we live in a world that is a lot more subject to interconnections and prices impacting one another and the terminal effect, I think in a world where we’re going to continue to see these ups and downs…the waves of disruptions are going to come in faster and faster…if you think about AI, we went from a world where we started to automate to a world that’s becoming more autonomous, a lot more intelligent; so we look at a world that is machine intelligence augmented by human beings…the two combine, but we’re going to move from a world where 80 percent of the work is being done by humans and 20 percent is begin done by machines to a world where 80 percent of the work is done by machines and 20 percent of the work is done by humans…

(10:14) Do you think that people are prepared for the investment involved?

BL: …are you going to be as a business investing heavily in your own capabilities of adopting and applying AI technologies so that you do? Who owns AI inside your company, who owns automation, and who’s going to be driving products that incorporate this other way of looking at things and solving problems?…There’s so many cooks in the kitchen on the inside is side in the corporations; on the other side, you have a lack of vision as to what these products and endpoint should be…

(12:50) What is the talent game for (those outside of Silicon Valley)…what does it look like for the folks who aren’t in the Bay?

BL: …when I think about these dynamics, if you were to be a startup in France focusing on AI, you have a great local pool of talent and you’re not in as much aggressive competition with the local Googles and Facebooks and Amazons of the world that they want to suck up all the talent from these universities, so play that to your advantage. We only invest in companies in Silicon Valley (SV), but the founders can be from anywhere in the world, the company could have ben started elsewhere, which means that we’re completely in favor of you maintaining an R&D somewhere in the place where you come from, where you speak the language, where you know the universities….

(18:35) What do companies do to start to grasp what is possible, see how they could be disrupted, where the opportunities lie?

BL: As a venture capitalist, we’re in a very unique, privileged position…we are educated constantly so we see patterns that are very interesting; my advice would be, talk to people who are in the business to get smarter and wiser, not just by reading things…but you need to talk to people that are on the front lines, who are doing it, you need to potentially be a corporation investing in (venture) funds as well…

…people should be using budgets to actually learn, you should be thinking where can we allocate money…you might actually get closer to people who organize that (sponsored) event and have incredible access, you could be working with incubators and accelerators…there’s a few different tools that corporations have that are accessible to them.

Big Ideas:

1 – People are not buying AI as a company, they’re buying results – a return on investment. AI shouldn’t be looked on as a “neat” thing, but something that has requirements, costs, and results, with a need for smart business decisions, the same as any valuable business tool.

2 – SV doesn’t necessarily have more talent, it just has more resources that allow companies to scale. AI and ML companies can and should get started and grow outside the SV ecosystem. The reason BootstrapLabs wants those companies to eventually have a presence in SV is the ability to scale ideas and ROI; returns are driven by acquisitions, and most of those willing to pay for these technologies are in SV.

This article was originally published on http://techemergence.com/ and it`s the result of a collaboration between BootstrapLabs and Techemergence.

Job automation predictions from an individual expert typically draw from years of academic research experience, or time “in the trenches” of industry. With growing interest and speculation on the job market of the next decade, we set out to garner a perspective as to what Silicon Valley thinks about the possibilities of automations in various business tasks.

We wanted to know – what work functions have the most potential for near-term automation?

In the infographics and article below, we explore the survey responses from nearly 80 Bay Area investors, founders, and tech folks – on which business functions have the greatest potential for automation today, and in the coming five years ahead.

Together with San Fransisco-based venture firm BootstrapLabs, we designed a simple survey that was handed out during their “Autonomous Corporation” event in November 2016. Below are the responses to this survey, and our interpretations and gleaned ideas:

Automation Predictions – Current

It is interesting to note all three groups of respondents considered business intelligence to be the business function with the most current automation potential.

Similarly, investors, founders, and “other” respondents were also unanimous in ranking human resources as the business function with the least current automation potential. It seems plausible that job automation in the HR department is less likely than the BI department, and that the predictions of our respondents would reflect this.

A uniform response for “highs” and “lows” was not expected, and seems to signal that there is strong shared sentiment around those two particular business functions.

While there seemed to be relative consensus around business intelligence, human resources, and marketing, other business functions – such as security and finance – didn’t have the same uniform optimism or pessimism across respondent groups.

Automation Predictions – 5 Years Out

It seemed highly unlikely from the outset, but one major trend resounded from the “Current” survey section to the responses in the “5 Year Future” section: Business intelligence again ranked highest amongst all options by all three groups, and human resources again ranked dead last for all three groups as well.

Based on the survey size (78 respondents, about one third investors, one third founders, one third “other”), this is by no means conclusive. There are no “conclusive” predictions in the first place (good startup idea though, someone should work on that). Rather, this seems

Manufacturing stands out as a major outlier from “current” to “5 years out.” Ranked among the lowest areas of current automation, manufacturing jumped ahead to nearly overtake business intelligence for the area of most optimism in the coming five years. It is possible that this is due to the heavier hard-cost investment of industrial manufacturing processes as compared to domains like business intelligence, marketing, of finance – where “automation” never has to reach it’s robot arms into the real world.

It is interesting to note that the current industry trends in funding AI and machine learning doesn’t seem to provide much evidence for heavy investment in manufacturing, so we might presume that the optimism of the investors and founders in the crowd spawned from another source.

Thank you to the Autonomous Corporation attendees!

We hope that you found the conference informative and enjoyed the networking during the event.

Seeing all of you hanging out until the end of the event made our team proud of their work and strongly encouraged us to keep working hard evangelizing AI around the world.

At BootstrapLabs, we believe that innovation and progress will happen at an accelerated pace in all corners of the globe, and that bringing people together around their shared passion for AI will drive positive impact in our world!

As many of you have been asking, we would like to officially announce that we have started working on next year’s Applied AI Conference 2017 (Check out the Applied AI Conference 2016 here) and will soon share more information about date, location and speakers line-up.

Below you can find some social media posts about the Autonomous Corporation event:

The Autonomous Corporation

We stand in front of the 4th and largest wave of the industrial revolution, powered by AI and Data. This is the biggest opportunity so far for innovation and entrepreneurship, and every single industry will be disrupted and redefined by companies that are not yet even born.

With the AI market projected to grow over 20 fold in the next 10 years to $3Tn annually, we believe Applied Artificial Intelligence represents one of the major wealth creation opportunities of this century.

Any system that is not learning will soon die, and applying AI to new or existing systems will extend and accelerate societal improvement.

AI-driven systems will soon be able to build better, more efficient products that scale and solve problems in ways that have not been possible before. While everyone is talking about Autonomous Vehicles, we want to talk to you about the Autonomous Corporation, where most actions will be automated, decisions autonomously taken and where outcome will be learned from to continuously improve results. We are moving away from the world of Automated Systems and stepping into a world of Autonomous Systems.

The power of AI is about leveraging technology and big data, automating repetitive mechanical tasks, capturing more data from the real world, and ultimately empowering humans with actionable intelligence, rather than replacing them, and finally changing our world for the better!

Join us @ BootstrapLabs HQ for an exciting evening with the leaders of the Autonomous Revolution!